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Saturday, January 23, 2016

Kirk Hammett: "David Bowie has been a pretty huge influence on me and on other people in Metallica"

Metallica's Kirk Hammett was recently interviewed by "One On One With Mitch Lafon" about David Bowie. You can read some excerpts below.
He said: "Bowie's influence on me was huge. 'Changesonebowie' was one of the… part of a handful of albums that I bought when I was a young kid. I had decided to make a point of going out to the record store and buying albums from artists that I heard on the radio. It was Elton John, it was David Bowie, it was KISS, it was Thin Lizzy and it was Led Zeppelin. And that was my first batch of albums that I bought. And the Bowie album was 'Changesonebowie', and I bought it because I loved the song 'Fame' and I loved the song 'Golden Years'. And they were just so completely different from anything else that was playing on the radio back then. And I really got into it."

He continued: "David Bowie has been a pretty huge influence on me and on other people in Metallica as well. I know that… Cliff Burton and I, we used to listen to the 'Ziggy Stardust' album a lot on the 'Ride The Lightning' tour. The title of our song 'Leper Messiah' is actually in the song 'Ziggy Stardust'. And if you wanna dig any further into how much of an influence he was, all you have to do is listen to the Bowie song 'Andy Warhol', and you'll know what I'm talking about. That song was a heavy influence on Cliff Burton and that album, 'Hunky Dory', was a big influence on Cliff Burton as well. If you listen to 'Andy Warhol', you'll hear something in that song that totally… You'll hear something in that song that will make you say, 'Ah! Okay. Bowie's music was an influence on Metallica.' I'm not gonna say where or what or how or whatever; I'm just gonna leave it up to you [to figure it out]."